1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to evacuation systems, and more specifically to a method and apparatus, which provides enhanced operational control in using such systems.
2. Related Art
Evacuation systems are generally used to detect undesirable situations such as fire hazards, and to perform actions such as generating evacuation messages (e.g., voice/audio messages or sounds) when an undesirable situation is detected or suspected. Thus, evacuation systems typically contain detectors to detect a hazardous situation and voice generators to generate the messages if/when a detector indicates the occurrence of the hazardous situation.
The messages may facilitate, for example, evacuation of people from a large building or manufacturing plant as is well known in the relevant arts. There is a general need to provide enhanced operational control in the use of evacuation systems. That is, the systems generally need to provide features, which give more operational control to deal with specific hazardous situations.